With over 12,000 delegates, the ASHA Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, is well known as being the premier annual event for speech-language pathologists, audiologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists.
Ida was again represented and hosted 2 workshops to introduce the GROUP and Patient Motivation tools. Ida audiologist Regitze Willemoës joined Ida Fellows, Professors Jean-Pierre Gagné, Joseph Montano, and Jill Preminger, to inspire and share knowledge about the Ida Tools with a motivated and keen group of participants.
Both workshops were energetic and interactive and the participants gave excellent feedback and suggestions. In the GROUP discussion, participants offered practical suggestions for setting up a successful Group AR program.
After one participant expressed concern about the cost of using CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) so group members could fully participate in a discussion, another individual offered the following suggestion:
“Keep the groups small, 5-6 participants. This improves communication and may eliminate the need for expensive Hearing Assistive Technologies (HAT’s).”
Another participant offered advice regarding activities to include in Group AR and to “consider memory and mobility issues of communication partners in communication strategy activities. For example, some spouses say that the reason they talk to their partner with a hearing impairment from another room rather than getting up and going into the same room, is that they have mobility or memory issues, i.e., they forget what they want to say by the time they get there!”
Jean-Pierre Gagné is a Professor at the École d’orthophonie et d’audiologie, faculté de medicine, at the Université de Montréal where he teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in audiological rehabilitation.
Jill Preminger, Ph.D., has been on the faculty of the Program of Audiology at the University of Louisville since 1998. She teaches courses in the areas of: Acoustics, Speech Acoustics, Research Methods, Gerontology and Educational Audiology. Preminger coordinates the curriculum and the student research program for the Program in Audiology.
Joseph Montano, Ed.D., is Chief of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center. He serves on the New York State Licensure Board and is a member of the ASHA Legislative Council. He is the current coordinator of the ASHA Special Interest Division on Aural Rehabilitation.